Millennials Are Consuming Staggering Amounts of Educational Video Content Online — What Does This Mean For Corporate Training?

A recent survey of YouTube viewing habits has found that by the end of 2016, members of the Millennial generation — now principally comprised of young professionals in their 20s — were watching an average of 6 hours of video content a day.

While a number of the stereotypes commonly affixed to this newest generation have fallen flat with time, one truth has held strong: This is a generation that simply loves video.

So what is surprising?

That love isn’t all just for cat videos and live streaming video games. Nearly three-quarters of Millennials — 72% — are using YouTube to watch educational how-to and tutorial videos.

YouTube, meanwhile, has answered their call. Today a quick search on YouTube for “how to video” yields more than 461 million results.

Astonishing? For many, yes. But for educators, who’ve been working with Millennials for two decades now, these trends are simply a reflection of the way today’s young professionals have been taught — and specifically, how they’ve been taught to learn.

A decades-old pedagogical tool, video is heavily used in education at all levels to improve problem-solving, stimulate critical thinking, and improve learner engagement.

The Millennial generation, which now makes up a majority of the U.S. labor force, has been a driving force behind a booming on-demand economy in which businesses providing just-in-time goods and services have become a catalyst for growth. Whether you are selling goods and services or simply trying to appeal to the Millennial consumer’s penchant for on-demand everything, you better be leveraging video.

But how what are the best strategies for using video to train and develop Millennial workers in your company?

4 Tips For Training Millennial Employees Who Love Video

1. Make It Easy To Record And Share Knowledge With Video

A video demonstration or walk-through can be created in a fraction of the time it takes to write out similar documentation. And with the right video platform, you can break down silos to improve knowledge sharing company-wide. Regardless of the industry you are in, better knowledge sharing internally can give you a distinct competitive advantage.

Give your employees the tools to record and share knowledge freely and watch the effectiveness of your workforce improve almost instantly. With social learning software like Panopto, subject matter experts can teach others new skills, exiting employees can document their knowledge before they leave the company, and anyone can share best practices by recording a video at the touch of a button.

2. Make Training Videos Short and Focused

You don’t need to spend huge chunks of time and money to produce elearning videos that replace in-person training classes. Research has shown that delivering training content in shorter, focused bursts of information — often referred to as microlearning — is not only more budget-friendly, but also produces better results.

Compared to 30-60 minute training classes, shorter training videos that cover one specific topic or idea are far more effective at engaging employees in information they will actually retain and use on the job. Microlearning is used for teaching employees everything from hard skills, such as sales training, to soft skills like communication and leadership. Dive into more microlearning examples here.

3. Make Video Content Searchable and Available On-Demand

Searchable, on-demand training videos give employees the knowledge they need, when they need it. It allows for learning that is instantly applied to a problem at work, leading to better retention and comprehension of new skills. So simply creating video training content isn’t enough.

Video training, like any other training documentation, needs to be discoverable on-demand. A searchable video content management system (or video CMS) is just as important as documenting the knowledge itself.

Many of today’s video CMSs give you the ability to not only search the metadata of your video content, but also the content inside the video. Videos don’t need to be manually tagged in most video content management systems in order to make the content within the video searchable. Employees can find the video with the information they need, and can jump straight to where that topic appears within the video.

4. Make Video Content Viewable On Any Device

Millennials, and other generations of workers, want to access job-specific knowledge from their smartphones or tablets while on the go. The flexibility offered by mobile learning ultimately allows employees to internalize training and put their new knowledge to work immediately.

Aside from flexibility and convenience, mobile access to a corporate video library is essential to companies with workers in the field, such as a mobile fleet or scattered sales team. Imagine giving technicians in the field access to secure troubleshooting video content or putting high-quality, up-to-date product videos at the fingertips of your sales team. For these businesses, mobile access to training videos is much more than a nice-to-have feature.

You may not realize it, but video’s large file sizes and broad range of file types can make for poor viewing experiences on different devices. A video content management system does the heavy lifting to optimize video content for the device, no matter the screen size, resolution or operating system. Be sure to invest in a video CMS that optimizes video playback on different devices.